Mass. VA hospitals in good shape

Thursday

Jun 26, 2014 at 10:57 AMJun 26, 2014 at 11:11 AM

By Gerry TuotiWicked Local Newsbank Editor

When it comes to getting veteransí services, long waits are often the norm in other parts of the country, but at the hospitals in Massachusetts, including the Bedford VA, it seems that access is fairly timely.Roughly 10 percent of veterans seeking VA medical care wait 30 days or longer for an appointment, according to updated national data the Department of Veterans Affairs released June 19. That is more than double the number who were listed in that category in a June 9 data set.More than 56,000 veterans have been waiting longer than 90 days for a VA medical appointment, and an additional 63,869 never had an appointment after enrolling in the VA health system over the past decade, according the June 9 audit. VA officials say they have since reached out to 70,000 veterans stranded on waiting lists.The audits revealed the situation is generally better in Massachusetts than in many other states."I think veterans here in Arlington and in Massachusetts are faring very well," said Arlington Veterans Agent Jeff Chunglo, who took over for longtime Veterans Agent William McCarthy, who retired early this year. He also gets health care services at the Bedford VA, and has had no issues accessing care himself.He attended a recent forum held in Boston†by U.S. Rep.†Stephen Lynch, D-Mass, who brought veterans agents up to speed on the recent audits of VA facilities across the country."The news was good, each area had their own minor deficiencies, but the standard was that most new enrollees in Greater Boston received access within 14 days," Chunglo said.VA reports, which will now be made public bi-weekly, figures show more than nine in ten appointments in Bedford were scheduled within 30 days. New patients, reports say, waited an average of 16.6 days for primary care appointments, and established patients waited just 1.3 days Ė numbers well below the national average and among the best in the state.Chunglo said Bedford VA did have an issue with their dental clinic, which sometimes had a long wait, but hospital officials said those patients were brought in sooner and others were sent to private practices for care so they could be seen more quickly. And other Bay State locations may have had longer wait times for specialty clinics, but not for primary care appointments."I have seen a bunch of veterans sign up for healthcare benefits and none of them have come to me with an issue so far, and I ask people to get in contact with me if they have any issues," he said. "When you go to the VA, Iíve always been struck by the fact that when you walk in another veteran is there to look you in the eye and then take you around to where you need to go.""I think itís a great healthcare system and it rivals anything that larger healthcare clinics have in this area," he said.Chunglo will also be opening a computer center on July 3 at Town Hall so veterans can come in and sign up for services online, which will be named for a Arlington veteran William Reardon, who died following the Normandy invasion and is buried in France. They will also be able to use the computers to help them search for employment.Fraudulent record keeping elsewhereFederal investigators have uncovered potential evidence of fraudulent scheduling records at dozens of VA hospitals across the country, with 13 percent of schedulers interviewed in the audit reporting that they had been instructed to enter false scheduling data to make wait times look shorter than they really were.Auditors flagged 81 sites, including the Brockton division of the VA Boston Healthcare System and the Leeds-based VA Central Western Massachusetts Healthcare System, for further review regarding scheduling and access management, although the report doesnít indicate fraudulent practices in those facilities."Iíve asked the Boston medical center VA if this is a problem for them, and theyíve assured me itís not," said Coleman Nee, the Massachusetts secretary of veteransí services. "I know the VAís inspector general is looking into it, and if even any of it is remotely true, itís disgusting."In addition to the long waits for medical treatment, the VA also has significant backlogs in its benefits system. The average U.S. veteran filing a benefits claim will have to wait 269 days to get a determination.Of the benefits claims originating from the VAís Boston regional office, 6,699 were pending as of May 31. The VA classifies any claim thatís been in the queue for more than 125 days as being in the "backlog," and more than 55 percent of the claims from the Boston office fall in that category.Long waits for careThe average wait time for a new-patient appointment in the VA Boston Healthcare System is more than 58 days for a primary care appointment, according to the federal audit of 731 VA facilities. 'Yet at the Bedford VA facility, the average wait for the same type of appointment is 16 days, and nearly 68 days in the VA Central Western Massachusetts Healthcare System.The VA had a goal of getting patients into appointments within 14 days.The wait times for established patients are much shorter. The June 19 data revealed that it take approximately one day for an established patient to get an appointment in the Boston and Bedford systems, and 11 days to get an appointment in the VA Central Western Massachusetts system.Massachusetts has fewer than 600 veterans who have been waiting more than 90 days for an appointment, according to the audit, compared to more than 57,400 nationwide.Image issueLynch said during a forum he held at the VA hospital in West Roxbury that the scandalous accusations of fraud at some VA hospitals, particularly the one in Phoenix, have created an image problem across the whole system. Eighteen veterans on fraudulent waiting lists in Phoenix died while awaiting care. Employees in Phoenix and some other VA hospitals have been accused of hiding the veterans on the false lists to make the officially listed wait times appear shorter than they really were."One of the veterans agents said their veterans sitting at home donít see Phoenix or they donít see Fort Collins, Colo. They see VA and they think West Roxbury. They think Brockton or Jamaica Plain," Lynch said.While the preliminary report found that VA facilities in Massachusetts need to increase access and reduce waits, particularly for mental health and dermatological services, Lynch characterized the review as fairly positive overall."The VA in their preliminary review has taken best practices from the Massachusetts VA hospitals and said theyíre going to recommend them to other areas of the country," Lynch said.He specifically referenced the Massachusetts model of having a veterans services officer for every city and town. Lynch supports a plan that would require the VA to pay for a veteran to get private healthcare if it canít see them within 14 days.Benefits backlogInefficiencies in both the benefits system and the healthcare system in the VA have recently come under scrutiny.On the benefits side the backlog, the number of unprocessed claims that have been in the system for more than 125 days hit an all-time high last year, topping 611,000 nationally. The number is now approximately 287,000."Since 2007, weíve probably reduced by half the waiting line on the benefits side," Lynch said. "Weíre seeing progress."Lynch views the backlog as primarily a matter of resources. He referenced a 2008 spending bill that Congress passed that gave the VA system its largest-ever funding increase. The additional resources, he said, helped the agency modernize its practices."Back then, they were actually doing paper filings," Lynch said.Nee said a variety of factors have contributed to the benefits backlog, including a system that had not modernized itself and underestimating the number of veterans it would see from post-9/11 wars. On top of that are additional claims from Vietnam War-era vets, who may have cancer and other ailments related to exposure to the chemical Agent Orange, which was used to defoliate jungles.Nee said Massachusetts has been working closely with the VA to encourage veterans to file fully developed claims rather than submitting claims without sufficient documentations."As a result of that, weíve seen veterans get claims now in 90 days, or 60 days," he said."I think itís a very complex system, how they rate these claims," Nee said. "Maybe taking some of the complexity out of that would be helpful. I know itís so complex, in fact, that the raters that do the work generally take a couple of years before they really feel comfortable and these people really know the system."ó Gerry Tuoti is the Regional Newsbank Editor for GateHouse Media New England. Email him at gtuoti@wickedlocal.com or call him at 508-967-3137. Eileen Kennedy contributed to this report.†